Wijaya Godakumbura

Project Goal

"Where is the sense in preventing disease if we do not also seek to prevent injury that is equally destructive of people’s lives?"

For more than a decade, a resolute surgeon in Sri Lanka has battled apathy and ignorance to save people from disfigurement and death by fire caused by home-made lamps. Wijaya Godakumbura, who won a Rolex Award in 1998, has a simple solution to this devastating problem — the Safe Bottle Lamp.